Private Faith is Atheism

An opportunity for political engagement is an opportunity to serve one’s neighbor; just so, the opportunity is obligation as God commanded it.

The chaotic transition of the ̶o̶n̶c̶e̶ ̶a̶n̶d̶ ̶a̶g̶a̶i̶n̶ ̶p̶r̶e̶s̶i̶d̶e̶n̶t̶ ̶ Elon Musk has lured me into revisiting Protestantism’s founding understanding of Christian vocation and political witness. The lectionary Gospel passages the last two Sundays from Christ’s Sermon on the Plain have elicited a number of especially bad hot takes that muddle the gospel with the law into a kind of glawspel.

For example:

I recently saw a number of colleagues on social media sharing a quote attributed to James Forbes, once the pastor at the historic Riverside Church in Harlem:

“Nobody gets to heaven without a letter of reference from the poor.”

The assertion is rhetorically powerful, quite obviously.

Of course it is compelling: lex semper accusat— the law always accuses. But such an assertion, torn from Jesus’ hard teaching, merely recapitulates the anxiety-producing Christianity Luther’s preaching movement attempted to reform.

Which is to say, “Nobody gets to heaven without a letter of reference from the poor” is not the gospel.

The poor person from whom every believer already possesses a letter of reference is Mary’s boy and Pilate’s victim.

On account of Christ, by means of baptism’s saving flood and cleansing washing, we are justified. “Nobody gets to heaven without a letter of reference from the poor” is an instance of the modern liberal Christianity privileging the Jesus kerygma over the Christ kerygma.

Back to the matter at hand.